YCLSA Statement on ANC NWC Double Standards over Issues of Members Discipline

The YCLSA is deeply dissapointed by the unstrategic thinking and the factional response of the ANC NWC to the SACP's appeal not to witch-hunt members of Parliament. The ANC NWC statement rightfully observes that, independent partners in the alliance have a right to raise whatever issues, yet falsely claims to have offered every partner in the Alliance an opportunity to raise whatever issues they want to raise.

As the YCLSA, we want to say that, there is a difference between offering an Alliance partner an opportunity to have a say on whatever matter and genuinely taking such into consideration on one hand, and exercising some ritualistic gesture of pretending to offer a platform to an Alliance partner to say anything while, in actual fact, such will never be factored in political decision-making, on the other. The latter is what the ANC masters.

As recent SACP's statements have shown, meetings of the Alliance where the SACP has always been raising critical matters relating to the state of the revolution, were not taken into consideration. This includes, but not limited to, the palpable inaction by the ANC over allegations of corporate capture of the state in general and the shenanigans of the Gupta-corrupt criminal network in particular.

As such, the consistency that ANC claims on matters of discipline is a fallacy that has to be called for what it is. Why ignore the elephant in the room in the form of President Jacob Zuma and conveniently pounce on mere MP's whose actions emanate out of being suffocated by the arrogance and denialisn of the dominant faction in the ANC? Where is consistency when a man, whom the buck stops with in terms of shaping the national developmental mandate, has sold the country to the Gupta family, thereby thwarting the capacity of the state to deliver on it's mandate?

The Gupta-backed fiefdom of the state President is more dangerous than the perceived recalcitrant behaviour of the MP's. As such, the so-called discipline of MPs affirms what the SACP refers to as factional centralism as opposed to our once collectively revered democratic centralist practice that has guided the progressive forces overtime.

Not long ago, the President arrogantly and unashamedly boasted about using his prerogative outside the Alliance and the ANC itself during the cabinet reshuffle. This he did against the ANC resolution on consultation and this reversed our revolutionary conviction that the Alliance is the centre of power. How different therefore is this friend of the Guptas to MPs who defied the organisation? The ANC must be ashamed of its selective firmness and how it crumbles before one man but want to act firm and in control over the rest of the membership.

If the ANC continues to be oblivious to the dangerous realities that systematically dog the revolution, stunt national development and stymie radical change of society, and continues to sacrifice truth at the altar of political expediency to defend one man and the neo-colonial capitalist social and economic arrangement, then it may as well close shop as far as the attainment of the objectives of the NDR are concerned.

The YCLSA believes that, the arrogance of the ANC's political elite really calls upon the SACP to play it's vanguard role more than ever before by uniting workers and progressive forces and build a popular front for socialism. And in this context, the role of the YCLSA to mobilize every young person across political and social divides for the realization of such a mission will undoubtedly have to be intensified. We have long said that the SACP is not the desk of the ANC, the SACP has the ever important historic responsibility to help liberate the working class against all odds.

As the YCLSA, we say to that factional NWC, if they want to bring to an end the ANC and the Alliance, let it discipline those members while they conveniently overlook other more dangerous realities that threaten to derail the revolution.